Creative Indoor Exercise Ideas for Winter

Winter months take us indoors due to unfavorable weather, daylight savings, and the various holiday activities. Coupled with holiday eating, this creates a perfect storm for the opportunity to overeat and cut exercising down or out. To remain diligent in this endeavor, you must find creative ideas to continue your calorie-burning missions. Not only should the activities be creative, they should be fun in order to ensure longevity and chance of success.

Dual Purpose Activities

Being a big fan of multi-purpose activities, perhaps the most beneficial exercise combines calorie burning with proactive accomplishments. Home improvement tasks are a proven exercise and muscle-strengthening activity. I lost more weight and gained more muscle mass putting in hardwood floors for a few family members than anything else. Large tasks such as laying flooring, finishing a basement, or even lighter tasks such as painting or installing crown molding, all utilize muscles and lung capacity otherwise unused. Invest a little money and elbow grease, and add exponentially more value to your home with trimming that waistline and strengthening your endurance.

You may have noticed after those spring- and fall- cleaning Saturdays, how tired and well you sleep that night and how much more vigorous you feel the next day. Cleaning is a great exercise, and takes care of those chores and tasks that clear your mind and body for holistic activity that helps the rest of your family out as well. Spruce up your home with the menial tasks that we usually avoid and overlook, the dusting, mopping, and actually hand-washing the dinner dishes. Get the rest of the family involved and now you not only enjoy the light cardio, but you spend quality time with those that you love.

Although seemingly contradictory in nature on the surface, cooking - for others - can provide a good workout if you can maintain the will power not to actually eat the profits of your efforts. Particularly during the holidays, making batches of scratch-made, home baked goods are a completely generous way to treat your neighbors, coworkers, local charities and civic groups, that suredly no one turns away and everyone shares in the holiday cheer. The more you bake, the more you burn.

More Fun, More Calories

The greatest new gaming phenominon, the Ninendo Wii, has become famed for combining incredible entertaining and addictive video gaming with physical activity. Nintendo Wii systems are becoming more widely used in physical rehab clinics and even senior citizens centers, as the games create an inexpensive, safe opportunity for play that includes a range of motions and cardio activities unparalleled with other indoor gaming activities like bowling, ping pong, and so on. Furthermore, with the advent of games such a Wii Fit which is specifically tailored for exercise using the Wii system, the opportunities for console exercise "gaming" are limitless.

You may haven noticed that no late-night programming is complete without the invariable work-out training video infomercial. Videos are a great way to physically view and replicate the exercises, and the typically peppy hosts and music are a great way to laugh off even more calories. The great thing about this is that now with the advent of online resources such as YouTube, you can view training videos online and for free! Push away the coffee table, fire up the computer, turn off your screen saver, and go to town. Viola - instant on-demand mobile, multimedia workout assistant.

Certainly the most fun calorie-burning activity, granted the opportunity and viability of such a thing, is taking the chance to spend some "quality time" with your mate, consummating your marriage, reassuring the old wedding vows, to speak of it in light of our younger audience. It is no secret that bedtime fun is precious exercise, entertaining, endearing, and also strengthens the bond between you. Just remember - it's all for the benefit of our health, hearts, and respiratory systems!

Classic And Proven

Traditional stationary exercise methods are tried and true and as beneficial as their years of successful use provide. Push ups can be done solo and at your own pace. Sit ups burn calories, tone abs, and are easy and quick to do. Jump roping and bar bells are mobile, cheap, and as easy to maintain consistently than almost every other method. Simply create a repetition set, increase the difficulty as you are able, and if you remain dedicated you will shave those pounds and inches in no time.

Although every new day presents it every new-fangled exercise device, much equipment such as ellipticals, treadmills, free-weights, all provide a very sustainable method for chasing that fat away. Additionally, the investment alone in these machines become a motivator for their consistent use. For those budget-minded individuals, your Saturday yard sales, local Goodwills, and Craigslist listings all offer cheap alternatives for finding just the right machine, at just the right price.

If the cabin fever becomes unbearable, always remember that your local YMCA is a great, safe place to exercise or find other activities to keep those calories burning. The YMCA's website homepage contains a place to enter your zip code in order to find your closest location:
http://www.ymca.net/

Good luck this winter with your exercise objectives. Remember that usually your biggest obstacle will be yourself. Fight the excuses and lethargy, and find a partner to share in your activities or keep yourself accountable with the goals set before you.